


This Tender Offering

by churchkey



Series: Long Ago and Far Away (Canon Winnix) [3]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon, Domestic Bliss (in a foxhole), Episode: s01e06 Bastogne, Episode: s01e07 The Breaking Point, Frottage, M/M, Series canon, Soft Boys, foxhole sex, foxhole sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:48:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24198472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churchkey/pseuds/churchkey
Summary: They're shaking the dust of Mourmelon off their boots and leaving all that Crossroads unpleasantness behind them. This is basically just 4,500 words of Dick and Lew in their Bastogne/Foy foxholes and I hope you enjoy a few of them.Part III in a series, but works as a stand-alone.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: Long Ago and Far Away (Canon Winnix) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739950
Comments: 10
Kudos: 80





	This Tender Offering

**Author's Note:**

> _I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain/_   
>  _Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained—_
> 
> From "To E.T." by Robert Frost

“Jesus, look at the size of this thing.” 

Nix dropped himself into the deep foxhole and spread both arms wide, turned in a circle. 

“I think this was supposed to be a house,” he called up to Dick, who was quietly taking the measure of their new CP. “They just stopped at the foundation.”

Dick hummed in response, but Nix didn’t hear him.

“Hey,” he said, louder. “C’mere, you gotta see this.”

Dick walked to the edge of the foxhole and stood looking down at Lew, his arms folded tightly across his chest. “Nice digs.”

“Look, honey.” Lew’s voice dripped with the ironic sweetness they occasionally slipped into with each other. “We can put the bed here,” he motioned with a casual wave of his hand, “your mother’s hope chest over there…”

Dick wasn’t sure why they did it, or why he liked it so much. Maybe it was just another reflection of the depth of their friendship, the ease and comfort they’d developed after having been through so much together. Or maybe it was their way of hiding in plain sight, thinking that joking about it in the open might magically dispel all suspicion. Dick didn’t really care to analyze it. He just knew that he liked the sound of Lew’s voice when he spoke to him like that, a little spark flaring fast and bright in the center of his heart. 

“Nix.” 

“What, you think the bed on the other wall? I thought about that too, but then we’d catch the sun in the morning.” He nodded sagely at Dick. “You’d hate that in the summer, trust me.”

Dick tipped his head toward the canvas-covered structure of branches and sandbags behind him. “Got a roof now, too.”

Lew held out his hands, palms up. “Who could ask for anything more?” 

Dick could practically see the warmth pouring from his eyes, like heat waves shimmering off a blacktop road. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him in such a good mood. They had work to do, but these little moments, these chances to add a stone here and there to the thick walls protecting what they had from the world outside - they had to take them where they could. 

“Don’t get around much anymore,” he said, straight faced.

“One more for the road,” Nix fired back. 

Dick cocked his head as he searched his memory for a phrase, a scrap of melody, finally groaning in defeat when he came up empty. 

“I got nothin’. You win.” 

A satisfied look floated across Lew’s face, the smug set of his jaw conveying more in a few seconds than all those thick black letters and lines on maps and distant voices crackling across the radio ever could. Dick had learned to read each tremble and flutter, every wink and cleft and furrow of that ragged, gorgeous face. 

“Then help me out of here,” he said, reaching up to Dick. “The Colonel’s on his way.” 

His gloved hand met Dick’s in a muted clap that echoed off the trees. He pulled and Dick pulled and in one swift hoist, Nix was out of the hole. They stood there chest to chest for a moment, grinning at each other, before he dropped Dick’s hand and stepped away into the shadow of the CP. It was just a few seconds, but the press of Lew’s body against his evoked a strange memory of his dad’s old Plymouth, how it liked to get stuck in second gear sometimes. He remembered how he had to pump the clutch, yank the stick in and out of neutral, and then the easy glide when it finally shifted into third. 

That’s what must have happened with them, he thought. They’d been stuck, grinding gears, but now that they were back in combat, things had shifted. They’d found the good road once again, and it stretched out ahead of them for miles, as far as Dick could see. 

***

Under his blanket, Dick was conducting an experiment. His body naturally wanted to tighten up, become rigid against the chill that crept into the tiniest gap and crevice, but he had a theory, developed years ago waiting for the school bus on icy winter mornings. He closed his eyes and consciously relaxed all of his muscles, trying to convince himself that cold was just a state of mind. It wasn’t a full minute before he felt his legs, stomach, arms, shoulders all clenching up again. No amount of grit or determination on his part could keep this cold at bay. 

He opened his eyes and saw a figure trudging mindlessly toward him. He wanted to call out to him, ask about Harry, but something about Roe’s eyes, the far-off stare and single-minded focus on just putting one foot in front of the other, gave Dick the impression that disturbing him would set him off a course that it had taken every ounce of his will to find again, so he stayed quiet. 

Through the fog, he could make out two more figures. One, the familiar shape of shoulders curved in a permanent slouch. The other, a head bowed in a pretense of deference as Nix issued a curt and forceful dressing-down, punctuated with authoritative jabs of his fingers. Neither of them liked it, but Nix especially hated these pointless rebukes. Dike wasn’t going to change; he wasn’t going to try harder. All it did was whip Lew into a furious lather, sometimes requiring hours to calm down again. But it was his turn. 

Dick watched the disgraced lieutenant nod and then slink away, pointedly avoiding walking past his foxhole as he made his way back toward the company. He heard Nix muttering, a sound that grew louder and more violent as he came nearer.

“God knows there’s no shortage of incompetent sacks of shit in the army but _that_ sonofabitch…”

“Lew.”

“Two fucking years, all that work, and it comes down to this.” Nix stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head in disgust. “Couldn’t find the goddamn line if you led him there by his banjo string.” He said these last few words louder, directed at the fog into which their target had disappeared. 

“That’s not going to help.”

But Lew was still lost in the flood of rage. He mumbled more curses and reprimands, almost as though Dike were still there to take it. Finally, his anger mostly spent, he pulled his flask from his pocket and tossed his head back as he took a drink. 

“Neither will that,” Dick said. 

“What?” Nix ran his tongue over his teeth as he screwed the cap back on and tucked the flask back into his jacket. 

“Nothing.” 

As they’d left Mourmelon, Dick had resolved to stop fighting battles he knew he couldn’t win. The drinking was one of them. No matter how gentle his suggestions, how patiently he waited for Nix to notice the damage he was doing, or to care about it as much as he did, he wasn’t going to give it up. Not for Dick, and certainly not for himself. There was nothing he could do except love him, deeper and harder than the fall Dick feared he was headed for. 

So that was that. He’d stop bringing it up, stop the glances weighted with censure and worry whenever Nix unscrewed that cap. But he’d found that, like most old habits, this one was dying hard. 

Lew looked down at him and his gaze lingered, as though really seeing him for the first time since they’d sent Harry away in that Jeep. They were both still rattled by it, and Dick suspected that some of the trembling he was failing to quell had something to do with seeing Harry go so pale so quickly, and that fresh blood, still wet in the snow. 

“You warm enough?” he asked. 

Dick met his gaze. “Is that a joke?”

“Take mine tonight.” He nodded at his foxhole. “At least you’ll be out of the wind.”

“I’m fine,” Dick said, a little defensively. He didn’t need another lecture about not digging in deep enough. He pulled the blanket up higher around his shoulders. 

“Fuck’s sake, where are your gloves?” 

Dick looked at his hands. “I don’t know. I guess - when Harry -” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Nix just stood there quietly for a moment, looking off into the distance. Then he walked away and was back seconds later, arms full of his own blanket. 

“Is there room for two in that golf divot?”

Dick’s face was unresponsive save for the tiny lift of one dubious eyebrow, but he slid over anyway.

Giving up the other fight required constant effort, a renewed commitment each day. Sometimes even more often than that. Being sent back to the front had jangled something loose in Dick, as though the bracing December air had picked him up and shaken him out of the haze of self-pity and introspection that had descended upon him like a fog. 

He finally saw with perfect clarity that he had no claim to Lew’s heart. The man was married, for god’s sake. They had a child. Dick accepted whatever Lew was willing to give him, whatever would fit through the window of those restrictions. The rest he served at the pleasure of chance and history and the United States Army. That they were in love didn’t enter into it. At least, not in any way that would change these basic facts. 

But they had each other now, and now was everything. Now was the entire universe folded in on itself over and over, compressed into the rumpled heap of their bodies huddled close against the cold. Each day, each moment they had together was infinitely precious, and Dick was learning to savor them all, to waste nothing. Lew had taught him that. 

“Here, give them to me.” Nix began unbuttoning his jacket. “Your hands,” he said when Dick didn’t react. 

Lew quickly took him by the wrists, pressed Dick’s hands to his sides under his jacket and rubbed his palms brusquely up and down Dick’s arms. 

“How’s that?”

“Better,” Dick said. “Warm.” He felt the ridges of Lew’s ribs through his shirt. “You’re gettin’ skinny, kid.”

Lew chuckled and rested his helmet against the dirt. “Hell of a diet, this war.” 

“Do you think he’ll be alright?”

“He’ll be fine,” Lew said easily, and Dick could tell that the reassuring tone in his voice was for his benefit. “Doc got that tourniquet on right away.”

“But you saw him, Nix...” Dick’s voice trailed off, became little more than a whisper. “God, he looked awful.”

“I’m sure he was in a lot of pain,” Lew said. “Probably in shock. But you worrying about him all night isn’t going to make it any better.”

“I know,” Dick said, and sighed. He looked up at the sky. A tiny patch of black had opened up in the fog and through it, he could barely make out a bright sliver of moon. “Look.”

Lew tipped his head back. “Is that waxing or waning? I can never remember the difference.”

From some dark corner deep within him, Dick summoned a memory, a game they used to play to distract themselves from the punishing hours of training back in Georgia. 

“It’s only a paper moon.”

“Baby’s boat’s a silver moon,” Nix said reflexively.

“It must’ve been moonglow.”

Lew paused a moment. “That moonglow gave me you.”

“Nah,” Dick shook his head. “That’s the same song. Doesn’t count.”

“It is? Are you sure?”

He hummed a few bars to prove it.

A smile fluttered briefly over Lew’s mouth. “I guess I’m out, then,” he said quietly. “You win.”

Something about the affection in that voice, dropped a register lower than the tone he used with everyone else, made Dick want to lean in closer. 

“Well,” he said, and heard the edges of his own voice soften too. “I’m sure you’ll even the score soon enough.” 

They shared a furtive grin that understood much more than what either of them were saying.

“What do you suppose they’re getting up to in Lancaster tonight?”

Dick’s eyes fell shut for longer than a blink, but it wasn’t for nostalgia or homesickness. He needed that moment to reorient, to put the pieces back in place. Lancaster. Home. Faces. Voices. Slowly, they came together, but he still struggled to see where he fit into this picture. 

“Oh, probably just listening to the radio. Sharing an orange.”

Nix laughed softly. “An orange?”

“Yeah,” Dick said. His voice had dropped to a cozy murmur. The memories were coming back easier now. “My dad always gets a box of them at Christmastime. It’s like the one thing he splurges on all year. He and my mom share one every night until they’re gone.”

“That’s so -” Lew hesitated. 

“What?” Dick asked, a little more life in him now. “What were you going to say?” His hands had fallen to Lew’s hips but he dug his fingers between his ribs again, feeling Lew squirm beneath them. 

“Quaint?” Dick teased. “Bucolic? Go on, I dare you.”

“Alright,” Lew caught his wrists. “Stop. I wasn’t going to say any of that.” 

“What, then?”

“It’s nice,” Lew said. “It just sounds really nice.”

“Nice,” Dick repeated, considering. “Yeah. I suppose it is.” He slid his arms around Lew’s waist and pulled him a little closer. In some wordless agreement, they adjusted their legs in a loose tangle. Lew raised his arms to drape them around Dick’s neck. 

“What about your folks?”

“About the same,” Nix breezed. “Except with highballs and mutual contempt.”

“Even at Christmas?”

Lew’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You kidding me? Especially at Christmas. I’m sure my mother is either hosting or attending her dozenth party of the season, which my dad is avoiding like the plague.”

“They don’t get along?”

Nix shrugged. “I guess they tolerate each other. They’ve figured out how to stay married this long, anyway. Although on what terms, I will never understand.”

Dick hummed contemplatively and tried to ignore the glaring difference between himself and Lew in this moment. He cleared his throat in equivocation.

“I guess I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Hey, no need to rub it in.” 

And just like that, the tension dissolved like a cloud. There was something preternatural about Lew's sense of humor, his ability to read Dick's mood and say just the right thing to put him at ease and bring him back to himself. He wondered if Lew knew how much he loved him for it, how grateful he was for all the innumerable, generous ways he had to make him laugh. 

“We probably shouldn’t be in the same foxhole,” Dick said with effort. He knew Lew would hear that too. 

“I’m gonna go check the perimeter in a minute,” Lew said. “Just let me get warm first.”

“If anyone walked by and saw us like this…” Heads so close their helmets were touching. There was warming up and there was lying in the tender embrace of your beloved. 

“Well, as long as you don’t take your cock out, I’m sure they’ll think nothing of it."

“Little danger of that,” Dick said dryly. “Pretty sure it froze off last night. You’re probably sitting on it.”

Lew’s eyes went wide. “I think I would know if I were sitting on your cock, Richard." 

Dick laughed harder now, the kind that comes on suddenly. It seized his whole body in delightful, uncontrolled shaking until his face hurt and tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes. Lew was laughing too and they took turns shushing each other as the laughter died away. 

Nix seemed pensive in the new moment that had opened up for them. 

“Have you ever done that?” he asked. 

Dick shook his head. “No. You?”

“No."

It was one of those things they'd never discussed. He didn't know why. But now, under the cover of darkness and two layers of army wool, he felt like talking.

“You’re the first man I’ve ever been with.”

"Yeah," Lew said, nodding faintly. "I figured that." He looked down at his chest and Dick understood his silence perfectly. 

“I gather I’m not the first for you.”

Nix gave a half-hearted shrug. “It was just messing around at school. That was so long ago, it hardly counts.”

Dick tried to fit this information into his understanding of the man he knew. It didn't matter; of course it didn’t. It just felt strange sometimes, after this long, to discover that there were things about Lew that he didn't know.

“But you’re the first man I’ve ever -” Lew hesitated, began again. “That I’ve ever felt… you know.”

Dick knew. They’d said it to each other just the one time, just to clear the air and make sure they were on the same terms, and that had been enough. They let the subject drop and picked up a safer thread. 

“Would you like to?” Lew asked.

“Would I - oh.” Dick looked down and a bashful smile spread slowly across his face. “I don't know. Maybe. Would you?”

“Maybe. If you want to.” Lew swallowed and his voice became more serious. “What else?”

“In bed, you mean?”

“Wherever. What else would you like to do with me?”

Dick took a long, deep breath as images flashed through his mind. It was too much to try to articulate, to lay down in careful syntax. _Everything_ was all he could think of, _I want everything with you. Your skin, your body, the weight of you sleeping next to me. I want to feel your cold hand on my back in the middle of the night. I want to wake up from a dream in which we’re not together and see you lying there and feel the rush of relief flood through me when I remember that you’re mine._

He stopped himself. No claim to his heart. 

“I just wish we could take all our clothes off,” he said finally. “And do it in a real bed."

"A bed..." Nix repeated dreamily. He looked up at the sky. “I’d settle for a roof.”

He took off his helmet and raked his fingers through his hair. Dick felt suddenly a strong urge to draw Lew's head to his chest, rub his face back and forth through all that wild hair. To breathe in the scent of him in this moment, unwashed and tired, and preserve him in amber somewhere deep in his sense memory.

Lew looked back at Dick. "I'm gonna take a little walk.”

Dick brought his hand to Lew’s cheek, grazing his thumb over the stubble shadowing his chin. Lew tipped his head under the lip of Dick’s helmet and kissed him. 

“You gonna be able to sleep?” 

Dick nodded. He took Lew’s helmet and placed it back on his head. “Please keep that on.” 

“Alright,” Nix said in the voice that meant he was humoring him, but also, that it was a privilege to humor him. “Night, handsome.”

He climbed out of the foxhole.

“Lew, wait.” Dick reached up his hand and Lew lowered to a squat. 

“Yeah?” 

“Come back. When you’re done. It’s too cold tonight.”

“I will.” He squeezed Dick’s shoulder under the blankets. “You sleep. I mean it.” 

Dick heard his boots crunching in the snow as he walked away, clear as the ringing of a bell on a cold, still night. 

He woke a little while later to a sudden draft as Lew lifted the blankets and adjusted their bodies under them. He woke again a few hours after that to the rise and fall of Lew’s chest against his back, clinging to him like velvet. 

***

Dick’s eyes were closed tight in concentration. He was trying hard to feel everything, catalogue all the sensations so he could remember, and come back to them when he needed to. 

Lew’s forehead pressed to his cheek. The moist patch of skin on his neck, warm under Lew’s hot breath and then cold again when he inhaled. The high flush blooming in his cheeks and rough dirt under his hand behind Lew’s back. His back, arching in little waves as he rolled his hips and Lew’s hands clutching his ass, pulling him deeper into the cradle of his open thighs. 

And between their bodies, the singular joy of Lew’s cock rubbing against his as he gripped both of them in his hand, Lew petal-smooth and hard as iron under the steady stroking of his long, pale fingers. 

This, his particular favorite, this feeling that electrified him, like tiny ball bearings shooting through his veins on every pounding heartbeat. He felt like the world had been keeping a secret from him, that sex could feel this good, and now that he’d discovered it, he took this pleasure that had been denied him for so long, took it greedily and without compunction. 

They didn’t speak; they didn’t make a sound. They just breathed against each other, clipped exhales that became more husky and desperate as Dick’s hand moved faster. He thumbed a circle around their heads, felt wetness there. One of them was leaking and he wasn’t sure who, and he loved that too, loved smearing the slick drops over both of them. Even this they could share. 

His forearm began to burn as the pumping of his wrist became more frenzied. Lew pressed his forehead harder against his cheek and Dick could imagine exactly what his face must look like now, his eyes screwed so tightly shut they nearly disappeared under that needy, wrinkled brow, lips quivering around the black, sucking darkness of his open mouth. 

Lew made a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a moan and then fell silent, bucking up against Dick as he came in sharp, violent pulses, and then Dick was coming too, and everything went still as death for a few perfect seconds and nothing mattered except the heat surging through his cock, that exquisite, annihilating release. 

“Jesus Christ," Lew muttered

Dick heard him, but didn’t reply. He was still slumped motionless on top of Lew, eyes closed, taking long, calming breaths. He didn’t remember orgasms ever having this effect on him before, having to work so hard to pull himself back to consciousness, like coming had plunged him deep under water and now he had to swim like hell to the surface before he ran out of oxygen. Sex with Lew always left him breathless and reeling, chasing some vague notion that there were even deeper places they hadn’t yet touched, but they could, if they kept trying. If they could hold their breath that long.

“Alright guy, you’re gettin’ heavy.” 

Dick exhaled a breathy laugh “Sorry.” 

He rose to his knees and sat back against the dirt wall, tucking his cock back into his boxers. As he was buttoning his fly, he noticed a few drops of semen on his upper thigh, his jacket sleeve. He rubbed his fingertips over them, rubbing them into the patchwork already staining his ODs. He smirked, thinking of how many people would see him wearing Lew’s come like a decoration, and never know. 

“What?”

“Nothing, just…” Dick shook his head and smiled wider. “Nothing.”

Lew pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket and shook one out. As he bent his arm to light it, he noticed the wet spots on his own sleeve, the front of his jacket, his pants. 

“It’s on your collar too,” Dick said. 

“Sonofabitch,” Nix mumbled, mystified, and rubbed it away with the heel of his hand. “How’d we manage to get it way up there?”

“I don’t know,” Dick said. “Suppose they give citations for that?”

Laughter rumbled up and shook their languid bodies. Dick stretched one leg, then the other, rolled his neck from side to side. Lew smoked his cigarette. 

“As it happens, I do have something for you.” An unmistakable softness had crept into Lew’s voice. 

Dick couldn’t imagine what in the world he could mean, other than some Regimental order he’d forgotten about until now. 

“For me?” Dick asked, quizzical. 

“Nah, for the other guy who just jacked me off.” He knocked his boot against Dick’s and fumbled for something in the right cargo pocket of his pants. 

“I want you to know I tried very hard to find the genuine article, but -” Lew leaned toward Dick and bent his arm in a formal gesture, resting something against it like a waiter presenting a bottle of wine. “I hope the gentleman will accept this humble substitute.”

The moonlight creeping through the gap in the blanket was dim, but through it Dick could just make out a word stamped on the can. Orange. 

He looked back at Lew, his face breaking into an astonished grin. “How did you -?”

“HQ,” Lew said, turning the can over in his wrist a few times. “Sink always keeps a few on hand for mixing cocktails.”

Dick blinked, shook his head slowly. “Cocktails. Jesus.” 

“Can you believe that?” Nix breathed a derisive laugh as he punched two triangles in the lid. Then without a word, he offered the can to Dick. 

Dick accepted the gift graciously, tucking his chin in an appreciative little nod before tipping the can to his lips and tasting the tangy, metallic sweetness flood his mouth. 

They passed that can of Army orange juice back and forth for a long time, drawing it out as long as they could. They talked of small things that felt far away from this hole in the ground, even though they knew it would all resume in a few hours. The confusion and disorder, the endless march of orders issued, changed, reissued, up and down the chain of command. And in between, those moments when Lew’s dark eyes would meet his from across the CP, pausing amidst the chaos to ask a single, enduring question: _Is any of this even real?_

“Now all we need is a couple rocking chairs and Bob Hope, right?” Lew asked. He shook what remained in the can and handed it back to Dick. “You finish it.” 

Dick was suddenly so overwhelmed with gratitude and affection that he didn’t want to speak at all, daunted by the power of all that honesty waiting patiently behind his breath, just waiting on a word from him. 

“What time is it? Might still be Fibber McGee.”

But what he was really thinking about was something Nix had said earlier, _this humble substitute_. How could he find the words to tell Lew what he was feeling? What he knew to be true on some deep, elemental level that even the cold couldn’t touch? That nothing about this could ever be a substitute. Not this tender offering to remind him of home. Not this bed or the love they made in it. Certainly not him or them or what they were to each other.

Lew was the realist love he’d ever known. 

And yet - 

There it was, that voice in his head reminding him of the facts, which were unchanging and indifferent to the river of hope dammed up in his soul. He knew he should heed the warning it gave, that he’d probably be grateful in the end. _No claim to his heart._ He tried to repeat it like a prayer, but he did not feel the spirit and the words rang hollow as they banged around in his head.

“Dreaming already.”

Dick blinked a few times and focused on Lew. 

“Hm?” 

“You look like you’re sleeping with your eyes open.”

Unless that’s exactly what Lew had offered him, time and time again, and he’d just been too blind or scared or foolish to see it for what it was. 

Dick gave him a tired smile. “Come here.” 

He shuffled to the side and made room for Lew to sit next to him. Their bodies settled into each other intuitively as Dick wrapped the blanket around their shoulders. 

No claim. Just Lew’s head on his chest and the lingering taste of orange on his tongue and the life that could be theirs, hovering there in the moonglow just beyond the margin of their little corner of heaven, so close he could almost touch it.


End file.
